Rike Beck

[Artist Biography]

Rike Beck is an artist and researcher. She studied at the University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany and graduated with honours in 2007. Her work focuses on the intimate connection between memories, perception and the expression and different layers of identity. Rike Beck is based in Berlin and her work is exhibited and published internationally.

As member of the design research lab at the University of Arts in Berlin and the “Silk Road Fashion” team of the German Archaeological Institute, she works with the traces and personal belongings of the deceased. Since these mummified corpses have been extremely well preserved, they silently carry information about their past lives. Using reconstruction techniques she extracts information about their identities, personal biographies and their culture.

Rike explores the composition and structure of identity through different media, such as collage, painting, text, graphic, and textile. In her current work, she investigates the direct link between our past and memories through our individual perception as well as the creative process by itself. She examines the diverse stages of connection with an artwork, from the artist's creative process through the viewer’s relation to the finished piece. Through the different media, she experiments with the effects and consequent influence of various materials on the artistic expression and how divergent contexts can shift the meaning of a creative work. Rike Beck's works are exhibited in public property as well as in private collections.

[Artist Statement]

Through my work I create an imaginative sphere in which all things exist in their own beauty and contrast amongst the conflicting. This space is composed of thoughts, memories and snapshots in time, like a mental archive or a conceptual library. Archives are not objective –neither are we.

I explore the composition and structure of identity using different media such as collage, text, painting, graphic and textile. As analogies, they allow me to develop ideas about the shift of perception in different contexts through slight changes among the contrasts.

When I reflect and work on something, it inevitably turns into a creative exercise, in which I playfully select, change and add fragments to create my own imaginative version. Through this metamorphosis everything becomes a story - a story someone could internalise.

I tell stories about the transformation in between the contrasts, such as beauty and ugliness or everyday life and fantasy, and how they change their places and shift their meanings. I work on concepts of identity in between the other and one's own, ideas and decisions and all of those different multifarious and nuanced chapters and moments of fleeting beauty and constant change. My work is about who we are - our dreams, memories, filtered archives and stories—and about our effort to find another special moment to discover something through which we could be transformed.

We all look for transformation...